If you shopped at Target in the last few months, you have likely received a new debit card in the mail. Since confidential credit card information was compromised for millions of Target shoppers, many are second guessing where they shop for fear of identity theft.
Forbes reports that December was a bad month for online security and breaches of privacy with apps such as Snapchat and Skype being hacked. Pat Phelan, CEO of Trustev, one of Forbes’ Hottest Global Start-Ups, and a leading provider of social data, says that mobile transactions have long had big issues with credit card identity security. LexisNexis, a computer legal research service, estimated that merchants were losing over $100 billion a year by 2010. New estimates show that for every loss of $100 due to direct fraud, merchants lose $279 of business from customers who avoid their sites entirely. It is estimated that between 10 and 14 million U.S. customers are victims of fraud each year.
Phelan delivers good news, too, however, explaining that as part of a partnership with e-merchants, customers can shop worry-free. Trustev supports such practices as identification of a customer’s device, an IP address track to ensure security, browser identity, digital footprint to identify fraudulent activity, and entering a mobile number at checkout. Entering such data may seem to be a bit of an inconvenience at first, but can provide a customer with a more pleasurable shopping experience each time.